Leopold I

Holy Roman Emperor (r. 1658-1705)

• Born: June 9, 1640
• Birthplace: Vienna, Austria
• Died: May 5, 1705
• Place of death: Vienna, Austria

Leopold I presided over the revival of imperial and Habsburg influence after the defeats of the Thirty Years’ War. He consolidated imperial authority in Germany, recovered Hungary from the Turks, and resisted the efforts of Louis XIV of France to achieve European hegemony.

Early Life

Born during the last years of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) as a younger son of Emperor Ferdinand III and Maria Anna of Spain, Archduke Leopold Ignatius was originally intended for a career in the Church. The education that Leopold received from the Jesuits at the Austrian and Spanish courts, intended to prepare him for the ecclesiastical career for which he was temperamentally so well suited, remained one of the most formative influences on his subsequent development.

This formation was a blend of the traditions of the House of Habsburg with the militant and authoritarian Counter-Reformation. The Austrian monarchy, more than any other European power, was the creation of its ruling dynasty, often the sole force holding together its disparate provinces. The imperial crown was seen as the patron and defender of the Church, continuing the traditions of the Crusades and the Spanish Reconquista, exemplified in Leopold’s reign by the wars against the Turks. The Counter-Reformation, embodied in the Jesuits, represented an unbending aversion to all that was contained in the Protestant movement, exemplified in the harsh treatment of the Protestant inhabitants of Hungary and in Leopold’s reluctance, despite pressing reasons of state, to ally with William of Orange.

With a German Habsburg father and a Spanish Habsburg mother, Leopold possessed all the family physical traits in an extreme form: the long, narrow face, the large and somewhat tired looking eyes, the slightly hooked nose, and above all the famous “Habsburg lip”—a protruding lower lip with a long, pointed chin. Quiet, withdrawn, and lacking self-confidence, Leopold was at ease only in the family circle. Despite his unprepossessing appearance and manner, however, Leopold was neither stupid nor devoid of personal resources, sharing with most members of his dynasty a great love of the arts, especially music, and possessing a high sense of duty and a tenacity of purpose that would characterize his policies.

With the death of his elder brother in 1654, this fourteen-year-old prince became the heir to one of the major thrones of Europe. He succeeded his father in the Habsburg lands in 1657 and was elected Holy Roman Emperor of the German nation, despite French opposition, on July 18, 1658.

Life’s Work

The patrimony that Leopold I inherited, consisting of the Austrian lands, the lands of the Bohemian crown, and the fragments of the Kingdom of Hungary independent of the Turks, each with its own character and institutions, was exhausted from the destructive warfare of the earlier seventeenth century. The administration, defense, and augmentation of this patrimony would be Leopold’s life’s work.

Located in Central Europe, with few natural boundaries, the Habsburg monarchy was vulnerable to enemies from all directions. During the first portion of the seventeenth century, the Habsburg emperors had attempted to strengthen the imperial power, assisted by their Spanish cousins and the Jesuits, but had been frustrated by the victorious forces of international Protestantism personified in the king of Sweden, assisted by the revived Bourbon monarchy in France.

Because the greatness of France under Louis XIV rested on its alliance with the Protestant powers to defeat the Habsburgs of Spain and the empire in the Thirty Years’ War, Leopold identified the interests of Catholicism and of his imperial office with dynastic interests. At Leopold’s accession, his greatest danger still appeared to come from the Protestant challenge, as King Charles X Gustav of Sweden threatened not only to seize control of Poland but also, in alliance with Prince George of Transylvania, to partition the Habsburg possessions, taking Bohemia for himself and placing George on the Hungarian throne. Immediately after his imperial coronation, Leopold sent an army under his leading military officer, Raimundo Montecuccoli, to bring the Swedish threat under control. By the time the Treaty of Oliva ended the First Northern War in 1660, Austria had successfully asserted its integrity and its leading role in Central Europe, saving not only Bohemia but also Poland. This success, however, was more than offset by the rise of a more dangerous power to the East in the revived Turkish Empire.

As the reinvigorated Turkish forces drove toward Vienna in the year 1664, the Ottoman power posed a threat not to Leopold alone. Crete, Poland, and Transylvania were similarly threatened by the renewal of the age-old struggle between Islam and Christendom. Consequently, Leopold’s appeal for help received a widespread response, culminating in Raimundo Montecuccoli’s victory at Szentgotthárd on August 1. Leopold failed to follow up this victory with vigorous action. French successes in Lorraine and constant anxiety about the Spanish succession diverted his attention to the west. Hence, in the Treaty of Vasvár, Leopold obtained only a twenty-year truce, leaving important Hungarian strong points in Turkish hands.

Leopold’s failure to profit from the victory of Szentgotthárd was a result of his involvement in dynastic considerations and the divided counsel received from his advisers. During the period of the 1660’s and 1670’s, the Habsburg Dynasty was in danger of extinction. This is well known as it applies to the Spanish branch of the family, but it is often forgotten that between 1649 and 1678, no healthy male children were born to the Austrian Habsburgs, so that Leopold was constantly faced with the prospect of being the last of his line. Hence, dynastic considerations, meaning coordination with the court of Madrid, often took precedence with Leopold over the interests of his own lands. Obsessed with these concerns but lacking self-confidence, Leopold relied heavily on the advice of his Privy Council. That body was divided between a Spanish, or western faction, which was primarily concerned with keeping the goodwill of Spain while checking the expansion of France, and an eastern faction, which saw the greatest threat to the monarchy in the revived Turkish danger and the greatest opportunities in the recovery of Hungary. With a divided council, Leopold pursued his own overriding interest, turning his attention away from Hungary as soon as the immediate danger was passed and concentrating on the French menace.

This neglect of Hungarian affairs was greatly resented by the Magyars, leading to a conspiracy led by Peter Zrínyi and others, encouraged by France. The conspirators bungled their attempts and did not obtain the expected assistance from either France or the Turks. By 1671, the leaders were executed, and royal Hungary lay prostrate at the emperor’s feet. The Privy Council proposed the complete centralization of authority in Vienna, as had been done with Bohemia after the victory at White Mountain in 1620, while utilizing the opportunity to re-Catholicize the realm completely. Although Leopold regarded the Hungarians as a burden rather than an asset and, like most statesmen of the age, looked upon religious dissent as actual or potential treason in league with foreign powers, he was not prepared to accept the sweeping proposals of his advisers. He rejected complete abolition of Hungarian autonomy as contrary to his coronation oath as Hungarian king. His intolerance is seen in the harsh measures taken against Hungarian Protestants, but his humanity appears in his commutation to fines and imprisonment of the many death sentences imposed by the courts. These measures left Hungary seething with discontent, so that Leopold was never able to concentrate fully on his goals to the West.

Two factors led to a revival of imperial prestige during the middle years of Leopold’s reign. In the West, the aggressive policies of Louis XIV, exemplified in the capture of Strasbourg in 1681, began to win for Leopold the position of champion of German rights, culminating in the outbreak of the Wars of the League of Augsburg in 1688, in which Leopold figured as the leader of all Germany, Catholic and Protestant, against the ambitions of France. In the east, the equally aggressive ambitions of the Turks under the Grand Vizier Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Paşa resulted in the violation of the truce between the two empires and the siege of Vienna in 1683. Once again, Leopold stood forth as the champion of Christendom. Europe held its breath while the western forces under the emperor’s brother-in-law, Charles IV of Lorraine, and the Polish king, John III Sobieski , assembled for the relief of the beleaguered Austrian capital. The great victory at Kahlenberg in September, 1683, was the beginning of the recovery of Hungary for the west.

Although the campaign in the east would eventually result in the defeat of the Hungarian Protestants, who had joined with the Turks, and Prince Eugene’s splendid victory at Santa in 1697, resulting in the recovery of Hungary by the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699, it also tied down a large portion of the resources at Leopold’s disposal for sixteen years, preventing him from vigorously prosecuting the war with France and leaving him exhausted when the question of the Spanish succession came to a head at the turn of the century. Moreover, Leopold was uneasy in his conscience about his alliance with William of Orange, who had overthrown the Catholic James II of England. That unease appeared justified when his English and Dutch allies signed treaties with Louis XIV, partitioning the Spanish Empire.

Leopold believed that the Habsburg Dynasty had the best claim to the Spanish throne, grooming his younger son Charles for that dignity, thus exhibiting a grasp of the European balance of power and of the shift of strength from Spain to Austria within the dynasty. When Charles II of Spain died November 1, 1700, Leopold stood alone against the Bourbon hegemony represented by the succession of Philip of Anjou. Before Leopold’s death a few years later, however, his brilliant general Prince Eugene had presented him with impressive victories in Italy and Bavaria, and the empire, the Dutch, and the English were once again allies of the House of Habsburg.

Internally, under constant pressure of war in the east and the west, the army developed into a powerful force for unity, but those same pressures prevented the formation of other organs of administration for the entire monarchy. Nevertheless, through his administrative reforms and support of mercantilist policies, Leopold left the Habsburg lands in significantly better condition than he found them in 1657 and prepared the way for the role Austria would play as the leading Central European power in the eighteenth century.

Leopold continued the long Habsburg tradition of patronage of the arts, especially of music, in which field he had the strongest personal interest, leaving behind an impressive corpus of his own compositions. After the Siege of Vienna, Leopold’s patronage began the creation of the Baroque Vienna that would be the cultural focus of Central Europe for two centuries.

Significance

Leopold I reigned during a critical period for the Habsburg monarchy and for Central Europe. He found that power weakened and threatened with dissolution by its defeats in the Thirty Years’ War, the ambitions of its neighbors, and the revived strength of the Ottoman Empire. A man without genius, but with integrity, a highly developed sense of responsibility, and tenacity, Leopold provided sound foundations for both the political and cultural development of his state in the next century, resisting without overcoming centrifugal forces while making Austria into an essential element in the continental balance of power. Faced with dangers to the East and West, he consistently preferred to meet the French challenge, believing that Providence would guarantee his success as the defender of Christendom against the Turks. Nevertheless, he failed to recover Alsace from France or to preserve the Spanish throne in the Habsburg Dynasty. In the east, he recovered Hungary, confirmed its association with the dynasty, and presided over the beginnings of the eclipse of the Ottoman Empire as a major world power. Leopold is more significant for the forces that he embodied than for his personal contributions to their success or failure.

Bibliography

Barker, Thomas M. Double Eagle and Crescent: Vienna’s Second Turkish Siege and Its Historical Setting. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1967. A detailed account of the Siege of Vienna in 1683, well written and presenting an account of not only the military but also the diplomatic and political aspects of the siege.

Coxe, William. History of the House of Austria, from the Foundation of the Monarchy by Rhodolph of Hapsburgh, to the Death of Leopold the Second, 1218 to 1792. 3d ed. London: Bell & Daldy, 1873. Despite its age, this standard work contains significant material for those interested in Austrian history. Propounds both thought-provoking analyses and interesting detail of court and personal life.

Evans, R. J. W. The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1500-1700. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. A detailed study, drawing on many sources unavailable in English for the formative forces underlying the Habsburg monarchy. Especially good on the influence of the Counter-Reformation.

Fichtner, Paula Sutter. The Habsburg Monarchy, 1490-1848: Attributes of Empire. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Sutter argues that the expansion of the Habsburg’s empire constituted a form of European imperialism.

Frey, Linda, and Marsha Frey. A Question of Empire: Leopold I and the War of the Spanish Succession. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983. The authors discuss Leopold’s role in the battle for control of Spain.

Goloubeva, Maria. The Glorification of Emperor Leopold I in Image, Spectacle, and Text. Mainz, Germany: Philipp von Zabern, 2000. Examines how artists created an image of Leopold I as a powerful and important monarch.

Ingrao, Charles W. The Habsburg Monarchy, 1618-1815. 2d ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. This revised and updated history of the monarchy traces the Habsburg state’s emergence as a military and cultural power of tremendous influence.

Spielman, John P. Leopold I of Austria. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1977. The only full-length biography of the emperor in English, giving a balanced but generally favorable account of Leopold and the people around him.

Wandruszka, Adam. The House of Habsburg: Six Hundred Years of a European Dynasty. Translated by Cathleen Epstein and Hans Epstein. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1975. An excellent overview of the role of the Habsburg Dynasty in European affairs, containing good character sketches of the members. Particularly helpful on the shift of power from Madrid to Vienna during the reign of Leopold.